


Peace

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-25
Updated: 2010-08-25
Packaged: 2020-02-29 05:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18772501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: Blair gives Jim a gift.





	Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Posted in loving memory of betagoddess. (This was written for the scrapbook put together by our fandom as a gift to betagoddess and a tribute to her generous, courageous, loving, and unquenchable spirit. She is so much missed.)

The only sounds Jim could hear were the comfortable, reassuring sounds of Blair's body and his own: breathing, hearts beating, the occasional slight rustle as Blair shifted minutely on the log beside him. But even those sounds were muffled in the gently falling snow. Nature was quiet. At peace.

Even the light was muffled and peaceful, slowly changing from flat, pale silver to pewter as the afternoon drifted silently on towards evening.

White drifted down through white in the air around them onto white in the clearing in front of them, and Blair's hand resting on Jim's thigh was an anchor letting him drift with the whiteness, drift with the silence.

He drifted…

The shivers running through Blair's mittened hand brought him back, finally, and he stood up in the clearing that was now half-dark, from the sky, and half-light, from the ground, and pulled Blair to his feet in silence.

They walked back through the woods to the cabin in silence. Not silently — their parkas rustled, their boots shuffled against the snow, their breaths huffed against the cold — but without words, and the small sounds of their walking were channel markers out of the sea of still-falling snow, still-falling stillness.

They stamped the snow off their boots on the small porch of the cabin, a larger sound: the buoy at the harbor entrance.

Inside, the logs were already laid in the fireplace, and lighting the fire brought crackles and pops to add to the echoes from pulling off boots, from unzipping and stripping off snow gear, from footsteps crossing the plank floor; the echoes from a match being struck, the faint creak of protest from Jim's knees as he crouched beside the fireplace, the squeaks and rustles from the overstuffed couch as Blair sat down on it.

The fire caught quickly. Living color, sound, heat; not whiteness, silence, cold. Presence, not absence. But peace of its own kind.

Jim stood up, his knees not protesting this time. Blair was shivering tranquilly on the couch, still silent, with two afghans now layered over himself.

With two afghans layered over himself, and the air of a man who had complete confidence that his partner was about to provide hot chocolate or a hot toddy. Or something equally warming. Jim smiled.

It was only four steps to the couch.

Four silent steps, to the dark glow of Blair's eyes, the smile on Blair's mouth — Blair's generous mouth, which shaped so much of Jim’s world with its voice. Which had shaped this afternoon of stillness.

He leaned down, feeling the coldness of Blair’s skin pulling warmth away from the air. Something warming; yes, Blair needed something warm. But first… He traced the quiet, smiling lips with a gentle finger. Blair's generous mouth.

Giving him words when he needed them, giving him silence when he needed that. Giving him everything.

He whispered "Thank you" against Blair's forehead, a warm whisper of breath — warm, something warm — and followed the words with a kiss.

Giving him everything.  
   
 


End file.
